and then a half hour after that a whole lot of yellen. janet yellen. her first news conference as fed chair. that is at 2:30 eastern time. there you see 48 minutes away. it will be a very interesting event. meantime, 6:00 tonight on "mad money," jim cramer is live with what i think is the most fascinating city for business in the entire united states. and he has some really great guests coming from seattle tonight. howard schultz, blake nordstrom, spencer rascoff and clay siegal. that city has so many great companies. that just touches the surface of them. amazon is there, and so is costco. a very interesting "mad money" tonight at 6:00. we'll be right back. back. [ indistinct shouting ] [ male announcer ] time and sales data. split-second stats. [ indistinct shouting ] ♪ it's so close to the options floor... [ indistinct shouting, bell dinging ] ...you'll bust your brain box. ♪ all on thinkorswim from td ameritrade. ♪ from td ameritrade. maestro of project management. baron of the build-out. you need a permit... to be this awesome. and you...rent from

all about yellen today.ually be a bigger concern amongst institutional investors on the street. we'll get into that and what the traders think about that a little later on in the show. >> i like it. over to you guys. >>> breaking news here. a big sell-off on the street, following the fed announcement. the s&p 500 tanking over 1% a session low. ending the day down on just under 12 points. our traders tonight are tim seymour, josh brown, tim nathan and guy adami. marking janet yellen's news conference as fed chair, her words sent shock waves when she suggested interest rate hikes would happen about six months after qe ends. >> the language we use in the statement is considerable, period. so, i -- you know, this is the kind of term, it's hard

this is a unique yellen story now. barra switches to yellen. that gives inflection to the yield curve people will buy gm. we're almost putting the safety issues behind them. obviously if you're involved in the safety, you should sell and you'll never put it behind you. hedge funds are mercenaries. scott, as you pointed out in your fabulous roll, this is a hedge fund football. >> yeah. >> paylocity a is pricing ahead of the range. you talked about that name and we're talking about the ipo listings here and alibaba is coming to new york. >> right. and i think that paylocity, look it's the cloud play of the day and the castlight of the day. i would like to see salesforce.com which is the actual barometer of cloud start going up. yesterday seemed like it had a move. it seems to always be thrown back when it gets in the $60 to $62 range and it's been straight down ever since. we haven't heard from mark benioff and then you have the froth cloud plays doing well and the actual cloud plays doing poorly. that can't last forever. >> we've talked about ne

it's interesting to look at what yellen said yesterday. i look at it and i can't really understand it. i'm not sure whether a slight mistake happened in terms of communication or maybe we're looking at too much. the actual statement was dovish and then on the other hand she indicates that rates could have higher sooner than anticipated. >> one of the things to keep in mind was the statement was very dovish. and it was yellen's first press conference. she may have been a little bit excited. and i think that the six-month comment was a little bit off-the-cuff. i think xhen taters are reading into it a little whit too much. i think the key take away from all of this is the fed is abandoning its quantitative thresholds and it's focused much more on the qualitative in terms of the direction of monetary policy going forward. i would expect more focus on inflation, less focus on the unemployment rate given the speed at which it's come down. frankly, the fed is going to wait and see. they're going to play it by ear. >> again, we're moving that thr

>> janet yellen speaks. she says, we could see an increase in interest rates six months after the bond tapering process ends. >> sooner than markets were inspecting. welcome to the second hour of "countdown." 7:00 here in london. thanks for joining us here on bloomberg television. we are waiting for breaking news on the u.k. retail sector. next is going to be reporting numbers. let's start with our top story. we have jonathan ferro onset. talk about what happened at the fed yesterday. what jolene -- janet yellen said , how it has been interpreted by markets. >> relatively hawkish. everyone was talking about forward guidance. it turned out to be a lot of noise. they kicked the sick .5% threshold -- 6.5% threshold in the bin. this was about right expectations. looking at grade expectations, this was in the summary of economic projections. all about the dots. familiar,who is not tell us what are these dots? >> it is in the summary of economic projections. the federal reserve puts out its forecast for things lik

. >> from yellen's lips, new federal reserve chief janet yellen in her press conference puts a chill into stocks when she indirectly spells out when interest rates may start to rise. the market was surprised. should it have been? what investors need to know now. all that and more tonight on a special edition of "nightly business report" from the nation's capitol for wednesday, march 19th. good evening, everyone. susie gharib has the night off. i'm tyler mathisen in washington where there was calm and confusion at janet yellen's first policy meeting as chair of the federal reserve. she dropped an explicit unemployment rate target for rising -- raising that is the federal funds rate. that was the calm it was widely expected. what wasn't expected and caused some confusion was some musing or was the more than that about specifically when the fed might start raising interest rates. her interest made many think that that day may be sooner rather than later. stocks quickly dropped. the dow was off as much as 200 points own to eventually pare some losses. steve liesman was at the press confe

there you go, 62 on the dow in the wake of yellen. from this show, thank youer have much for watching "squawk on the street." as we hit noontime on the east coast, let's hand it over to the "fast money halftime" report. scott waper? >> have a greate rest of the da. here's the game plan. janua janet's jolt. the fed chair speaks and the stocks sell off. portfolio killers, the stock some say could kill your returns. we're going to name the names and see if the traders agree. >>> outside the box with the golf season soon to be in full swing, we'll meet one start-up catering to weekend hackers. we've got the ceo live and the goody bags. jon and pete are here along with josh, steve grasso. the market is rebounding today on better than expected economic news but there are still very much digesting what we're calling the yellen surprise. a suggestion by the fed chair that rates may rise sooner rather than investors were anticipating. let's take it to the panel to see how to play this whole thing now. josh, what do you make of the markets reac

yellen is going to continue to taper.es that mean for the emerging market which have been punished? >> tinge taper is already in motion in the emerging markets in the sense that there's capital flight. as a result i think we're in the middle of the later innings of a cyclical correction. i think the last couple of faces of that aren't going to necessarily be a lot of fun. i think we're going to see continued policy response which is good but we're going to see policy result in much lower growth which is not going to be fun for ek kitty investment. >> very difficult to find the winners in that environment? >> the opportunity set of attractive opportunities is definitely narrowing. >> where are the winners? where are the places to put your money there? >> the easiest places i think to make money right now where the current account surplus countries like korea, places like the philippines where you actually have current account surpluses or countries with manageable current account surpluses, mexico. i think if you lean agai

eastern followed by yellen's comments at 2:30 eastern. ken logger says the new fed chair has a difficult balancing act on her hands. >> she certainly has a tough job convincing markets that when they see some inflation as they may, you know, a year from now say that the fed is not going to start moving quickly. that's the big concern as she gives her first press conference. how does she massage markets? how does she assure them that she intends to stay the course, wait, not tighten quickly so that interest rates don't go up ahead of her, ahead of what she wants. >> in line with that, could the fed consider hiking rates by tend of this year? former fed governor heller said today investors pricing in a rate hike for 2014 could be caught off guard. joining us now is the head of foreign exchange strategy at socgen. good morning. >> good morning. >> do you think inesters will be surprised? >> i doubt it. this federal reserve, for a while now, has been incredibly dovish. the fed funds rate, low inflation for 12 years, and this ever so careful t

i'd like to welcome chair yellen. dr. yellen is serving her first term as chair of the board of governors of the fastball system. she was sworn into office earlier this month. before that dr. yellen served as vice chair and member of the board of governors of the federal reserve system. she was also previously chair of the council of economic advisors. chair yellen, please begin your testimony. >> chairman johnson, senator crapo and other members of the committee, i'm pleased to present the federal reserve semi annual monetary policy report to the congress. in my remarks today, i will discuss the current economic situation and outlook before turning to monetary policy. i will conclude with an update on our continuing work on regulatory reform. first, let me acknowledge the important contributions of chairman bernanke. his leadership helped make our economy and financial system stronger and ensured that the federal reserve is transparent and accountable. i pledge to continue that work. the economic recovery gained greater

rick, how did you read yellen today? >> i don't think think she said that much different than we heard from her before. the markets read a lot more into her than i did and they went down on something that they might as well have gone up on. if you say you might normalize sooner than people thought, that means the economy is improving. the market should haveom applaud that. >> rick, i saw this quote from leon cooperman. i think it was via doug cast but cooperman says if people don't believe oron don't understand tn interest rates have to go up, they shouldn't be in this stock market at all. i don't think a one percent interest rate is any big deal. i'm going get your take. was the impression that janet yellen was hawkish in your view? >> no, definitely not, larry. what we saw today in action was some of the nworld's biggest bod funds and their positions being long, threes being long, fives. they like to be long the heart of the yield curve around that five-year sector. if you look at threes or fives, they came out like a

janet yellen helped earlier on. she was talking about considerable slack in the economy, sounding very dovish. saying keeping rates low be needed for some time, that helped. market leaders today, looked like the beginning of 2014 again. biotech stocks are up, airline stocks. xsd, semiconductor stocks, those were market leaders early on, had trouble in the last few weeks. and speaking of trouble in the last few weeks, it's gone away for emerging markets. the eem is up eight days in a row right now. china, brazil have recovered a little. that's a new high for the year. we were saying this was dead three weeks ago. new high for the year. how about all the momentum and growth names that started out january as the big market leaders here. they are to the downside right now but they have been replaced by consumer stocks. so what's moving here is the growth names that people are paying a lot of money for. in the last couple weeks, they're being replaced by more let's call them value-oriented names, cheaper names. kroeger,

janet yellen's big debut. i don't even know where to start.e one thing is, this is a big question, was she going to say something that was going to rally the market? she did. what do you make of her today? >> she will do it again and again. the 2015 interest rates story. the couple subtle things i thought people should know about. peter barnes question was one of the best ones because pivoted to what is going on in ukraine and europe, she looked like a real statesman, we are monitoring this, she said the right things and i think that was good news. the city confident hand at the fed. the other thing was exactly what you said. she fessed up to the fact we followed the good data in the fall and got ahead of ourselves. thought the data was really good, now we have to wait and see. we saw in the outlook in a way bernanke or greenspan none of the others would have done so quickly. volatility is probably going to be a good play whenever she is speaking. cheryl: if you look at the charts, all of them going through the roof. the banks specifically. we

janet yellen will hold a press conference. the shadow of steve jobs hangs over apple's haunted empire. good morning, this is "bloomberg surveillance." we're live from our world headquarters in new york. i am tom keene joined with scarlet fu and adam johnson. >> good morning. overnight, u.k. and a plummet rate held steady at 7.2%, reinforcing the bank of england's tryst rate to record low. -- interest rates at a record low. rough recovery ahead of a sales tax increase scheduled for april. in china, starting trading between the yuan new zealand dollar, currency and global trade is a big deal. they're trying to make the yuan a global currency. >> good luck. research shows it is a lot harder to do. >> easy to talk about, harder to get people to buy into it. economic data in the u.s., 7:00, we have the weekly mortgage application. that is a volatile number. 8:30, the account balance. 2:00, fomc followed by janet yellen's news conference. we will carry that live. that is a very big deal. doesn't paint a malaysia 370. we will talk ab

janet yellen's first as chair.o the fed continuing with the tapering program of its monthly bond buying and reducing asset purchases by 10 billion bucks. we have steven ol' lynner, american enterprise independence statute and former fed economy. he believes the fed will continue to tapering. the big thing is guidance. what will they do about the box they cornered themselves regarding unemployment? >> well i think they're going to drop the unemployment rate threshold at today's meeting, the 6 1/2% threshold. become ob. the unemployment rate is nearly at 6 1/2%. a couple months it could be lower than that at that point it will be completely uninformative. so i think they will drop that threshold and they will draft some new qualitative guidance hopefully will give markets a sense of what their plans are. cheryl: steven, what do you expect the decision making to be at this meeting? when mr. bernanke had his final meeting he had unanimous consent and support from the board. this time though, mr. fisher, mr. plosser, ma

cheryl: you love janet yellen. by the way, five feet tall.t had the opportunity to meet her. cheryl: all right. well, congratulations. the fund's doing very well against the benchmark. >> thank you. thank you so much. cheryl: a lot has to do with the stock picking you're doing. >> thank you. cheryl: we've got about six minutes to go. nobel prize winner robert shiller, arguably the country's leading housing expert, is going to join us to give his take on the housing market, the economy and also what we can expect next week. don't move, be right back. ♪ ♪ it's a growing trend in business: do more with less with ss energy.hp is help. soon, the world's most intelligent servers, designed by hp, will give ups over twice the performance, using forty percent less energy. multiply that across over a thousand locations, and they'll provide the same benefit to the environment as over 60,000 trees. that's a trend we can all get behind. iwe don't back down. we only know one direction: up so we're up early. up late. thinking up game-changing ideas, like th

>>> the yellen effect. when rates rise, and they will at some point, what does that mean for your investments, the housing market, your mortgage and for savings? >>> just do it. and that's what nike did in its latest earnings report. what's behind the strong quarter at the world's largest athletic clothingmaker. we have all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" forthursday, march 20th. >>> good evening, everyone, and welcome. winter is over and spring has sprung. sort of. and for their part, stocks sprang as in sprang back from yesterday's losses. the chill that fed chief janet yellen put into stocks yesterday when she hinted that interest rates might rise sooner than expected next year was all but gone today. got a boost from better than expected economic data. the philadelphia fed reported a boost in business activity in its region this month. a private reading on leading economic indicators was higher in february. even though jobless claims rose by 5,000 last week, the increase was less than

for the moment, yellen is convinced there is lots of slack in the labor market. look for her to find a way to communicate the slack in the markets for the days ahead. i'm steve liesman. >>> our guest tonight says the stock market is quote pricey and tells investors to prepare for a correction. chief investment strategist. ms. gibbs, welcome. we could see 10%. what should i do to prepare for that? >> the issue we have now is the stocks are really priced for perfection. right now the s&p 500 is trading at 15.6 times forward earnings. you're paying $15.66 for every dollar a company is forecasted to earn. since the financial crisis, normally you would pay $14. it's going back further, 15 years you would pay around $16. it's not that we're a bubble or that we're way above the historical range, but we're at the top of that range. >> what should i do, erin? should i get out of stocks? should i lightening up on certain kinds of stocks? ? >> no, not saying sell, use any corrections as opportunities in get in. right now it's extremely hard to find good values. we're sort o

what did yellen really mean?'m fairly certain no intention by yellen to accelerate the market sense of when the fed would hike rates for the first time. the fed is comfortable with what the market thought going into the meeting and there was no reason for yellen to move that up. the fed said explicitly its new language was not designed to change the market's outlook. take them at their word on that. and there was a highly devilish comment that was completely overshadowed with the fed saying they would keep rates at normal, even when two hawks sign on to this. the intention was to convey a more dovish message. you get a gaffe. i don't think it's ridiculous, but it makes some sense. >> i know that i will die. i will die someday. >> right. >> it's hard to accept, but it's true. and so i start planning now for that day. >> but you don't want somebody telling you it's next spring. >> you hope it's a considerable period. >> we know fed rates will go up. they can't go down unless we go negative and start paying people t

what did you make of janet yellen's first press conference? what did you make of the aftershocks that hit wall street? >> there is not that much that the fed can do to stimulate the economy. the fed under ben bernanke has done a great deal, just about all he can do to bring long-term interest rates down, keep short-term interest rates down. janet yellen delivered the news that wall street was afraid of hearing. ,ventually, that bolstering keeping interest rates down, cannot continue infinitely. she is going to allow interest rates to rise. that is what ben bernanke was doing at the end of his tenure. she is going to continue the same policies. wall street got nervous because of -- of course if interest rates are allowed to rise, that means that bonds become more attractive. that in turn means that stocks become less attractive. that is what wall street has been living off of. the fumes, or you might change the metaphor and say the steroids, that come from artificially keeping interest rates down. tavis: is the economy right now in a position -

than janet different yellen.k about things very different and they would think about the numbers differently. i'm not sure about the situation like the one we have right now, we would see differences. larry's style is quite different. if you had a chance to ask the question today, what would be? >> what would you ask janet? >> i do not think of it after anything. i think it is better for the fed to chart a policy that is not quite as clear. the view about forward guidance and its advantages are a bit overstated. the reason is this. forward guidance is another way of having a rule, like a taylor or other rule for the fed. it is saying, we will lock ourselves into a policy. that is fine as long as you continue to do that. as long as those rules tend not to be credible. i would not want her to get out there and make statements that the market might misinterpret that she would have to retract later on. she is cautious enough to avoid doing that. >> always a pleasure. former chairman of the president's council of econ

david: let's talk about what, one thing that janet yellen said.a lot of things today, maybe too much but she said how the financial crisis was so severe, so, so big, much bigger than the s&l crisis, that it required the federal reserve to do this extraordinary money creation in order to buy trillions of dollars worth of bonds. do you think, bottom line, do you think that what the fed has done over the past three or four years has been helpful or harmful to the economy and why? >> i think net it has been very harmful. now, the fed, in my view, the federal reserve created the financial crisis itself because of policies that went back to the early 2000s when they were creating too much money and creating negative interest rates that spurred inflation. david: let's not relive that let's go on to now. why is the economy in worse shape now than it could have been had the fed not gotten into qe? >> the big thing has to happen is for the economy to clear. prices get rationale. you need real estate prices to fall. you need markets to clear. once that happe

more janet yellen's testimony.rdelli, former ceo of home depot and chrysler. he will weigh in on business in the u.s. and gm ceo mary barra's testimony. ♪ is 56 past the hour and that means bloomberg television is on the markets. i'm scarlet fu. 30 minutes into the u.s. trading day and in terms of this market, looks like we will close out the first quarter with gains. zero .75%, dow jones industrials average -- adding 145 points. we should mention janet yellen is giving a speech in chicago -- her prepared remarks remarks suggest monetary easing will remain a while longer. i was looking at treasuries, and was all treasuries decline, prices falling, meaning higher yields. but the drop has been pared a little bit as yellen's headlines across. %.-year, 2.7353 gold is also falling as well. let's go to peter cook, our chief markets -- chief washington correspondent with more on janet yellen's headlines. give us the main take away. >> the main take away for the this speech,t janet yellen details over the course of 15 page

let's start out with janet yellen's press conference. many investors did not seem to be buying what she was selling. here are some of the highlights. >> the fomc continues to see sufficient underlying strength in the economy to support ongoing krugman in the labor market. the fomc will continue assessing incoming data carefully to ensure the policy is consistent with obtaining the longer run objectives of the fomc of maximum employment and inflation of 2%. in short, the larger the shortfall of employment or inflation from the respective objectives set by the fomc, and the longer any such shortfall is expected to persist, the longer the target federal funds rate is likely to remain in the present range. >> and here's what she had to say about what everyone else was talking about in q1, the weather. >> certainly, the weather has played an important role in weakening economic activity in q1. it is not the only factor at work in most projections for growth in the first quarter. it is an important factor. it is not the only factor. >> and so

janet yellen sees a lot of slack.ed these jobs to replace all the lost jobs from the crisis, we still have population growth and we have population growth over the last five or six years and the employment of population ratio has not risen very much. something janet yellen has pointed out. she sees a lot of slack. she sees a lot of part-time whose want to work full time. she sees a an unprecedented increase in unemployment. and those facts are driving her to follow the monetary policy that will continue to try to get rid of those problems -- >> and you think that will continue to drive the stock market. ? >> and the lower rates will drive liquidity into the system and ultimately not so much penalize people who are elderly, although it does have that effect, it's incentivizing us to take risk. if you go out there and you put your money in the bank and you have done for the past four or five years, you got 0%. inflation has been running on a headline basis at 2%. ben bernanke and janet yellen have charged you a 2% tax f

there you go, 62 on the dow in the wake of yellen.nd it over to the "fast money halftime" report. scott waper? >> have a greate rest of the da. here's the game plan. janua janet's jolt. the fed chair speaks and the stocks sell off. portfolio killers, the stock some say could kill your returns. we're going to name the names and see if the traders agree. >>> outside the box with the golf season soon to be in full swing, we'll meet one start-up catering to weekend hackers. we've got the ceo live and the goody bags. jon and pete are here along with josh, steve grasso. the market is rebounding today on better than expected economic news but there are still very much digesting what we're

janet yellen, steve liesman.tock to look at, a midcap, let's bring it up if we can here. usually when a company buys another company, the stock goes down because they have to spend money. horizon pharma is up above the market cap. they're doing a reverse merger with another biotech for $660 million to combine arthritis drugs. what's interesting is that horizon is up 500% plus. we've highlighted these buy yoes tech. these names are up 100%, 200%, 300%. it's mind blowing how much stocks have gone up. >> wow. >> if they don't get that one particular drug down -- >> it's like a binary outcome. the drug is going to either succeed, be purchased or you're going to go under. >>> coming up, next is a very big interview. billionaire howard hamm is going to join us right after the break. he has a lot to say about the crisis in crimea and what it means for the u.s. nat gat exports. we'll talk to him about that and much more in a moment. ♪ [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. ♪ she can prin

genet yellen says in about six months time.estors took that cleared out and said i will sell stocks and i am going to start selling treasuries. s&p futures are down again. we are "on the markets" again 30 minutes. hmart allows women's to swap and sell items from their closet and they have another -- enough close to philly nordstrom sized store. a partnershipunce with united states postal service to create a custom flat rate shipping label. joining me for more is the founder and ceo. great to see you this morning. >> thanks for having us. >> as someone who has a closet full of clothes, this is interesting. you say that women go on this mobile app and they basically sell each other's clothes? >> it's very simple. it's available for iphone and android and millions of women use it every day to buy and sell fashion and talk to each other and attend virtual shopping parties. was the shipping part difficult and that's what you partnered with the postal service? >> it's a huge friction point. you have a beautiful prom dress or heavy ba

okay, guys, janet yellen is on the clock just in a matter of minutes. she will give her first news conference as chairman of the fed. we will carry that of course as soon -- i mean, literally, mandy, the moment it begins. >> moment. also jim cramer's going to be joining us live with his reaction to the fed statement and what his key words are he's looking out for for ms. yellen to stay. do stick with us here. a very special edition of "street signs." we're watching the market kick by tick. yields spiking, dollar spiking. we'll keep on watching for you. we'll be right back. disney started in a garage. amazon started in a garage. ♪ the ramones started in a garage. my point? some of the most innovative things in the world come out of american garages. introducing the lighter, faster cadillac cts. 2014 motor trend car of the year. ain't garages great? phone: your account is already paid in full. oh, well in that case, back to vacation mode. ♪boots and pants and boots and pants♪ ♪and boots and pants and boots and pants♪ ♪and boots and pants... voice-enabled

janet yellen will spook the market with her debut conference. next. it's a growing trend in business: do more with less with ss energy.hp is help. soon, the world's most intelligent servers, designed by hp, will give ups over twice the performance, using forty percent less energy. multiply that across over a thousand locations, and they'll provide the same benefit to the environment as over 60,000 trees. that's a trend we can all get behind. but. lou: toyota peyser record 1.2 billion dollars to settle criminal charges over the deadly safety issues that the cars would accelerate it claims toyota misled consumers and could serve as a template how the justice department approached general motors is dealing with recalls of its own 1 billion for the cover-up what will gm have to pay 10 years in the making? janet yellen speaks to reporters for the first time as chair of the federal reserve and the market did not like part of her debut when she tried to explain why keeping interest rates years he wrote for a considerable time really meant. >> this is the kin

janet yellen was transparent. i'm not saying she wasn't, but when there's nothing on the other side of the window to see, just because it's clean doesn't mean the picture is better. if i look at a 277 ten-year, not only is it unchanged from yesterday, it's actually still not going to be the highest yield close that we've had recently. we closed at a higher yield on march 7th. over a week ago. so i'm not sure i buy in. we're still 26 basis points lower for the year. lower for the year on a ten year. most of the sticking -- let me get this right. they're doing a taper, which means they're not buying as many long maturities. on the short ends, they're promising not to raise rates. what happened yesterday? transparent -- the part they're not buying anymore rallied and the part they say scouts honor we're not going to change that, sold off. to me, there's a normalization coming. it's going to be uneven. there's doses of reality that the fed's exit is still never going to be transparent until they decide actually what i

the yellen wobble.t's going to help the banks, they're going to be able to make more money when they loan money. so that's a good thing. but right now we're sitting on 40% returns over the past 12 months. what do you do here? do you lock some of the gains in. interesting to see the reaction when you see bank of america easing off a little. morgan stanley easing off a touch. these are fractional moves lower but investors are taking a pause here. what is, in fact, going to be b the next catalyst. that is going to be whether or not for instance bank of america raises the dividend to 24 cents from 5 cents which is the analyst expectation. >> a meager overall dividend but a giant percentage. >> citigroup, jump is supposed to be 1200%. >> if i go from a d minus to a c minus, parents aren't going to be happy. >> it's all in expectation. >> 100% gain. >> all in expectations. correct? >> i always expect a lot from you. and you deliver every time. >> i expect a lot from you, as well, brian. stiles you deliver. no

fed chair yellen kicking off a conference meeting today. and the third, which is relatively new, inflation. food prices posting their biggest jump in nearly 2 1/2 years. so let's kick it off with a very simple question. which of those three things is the most important to your money? let's bring in matt malley. you probably say a little bit of all of the above. you wouldn't say it like that, but i'm going to force you to pick one. of those three, which one is the biggest? >> i think the biggest is going to be at least in the intermediate term is going to be russia. and it actually doesn't have to do with whether they start shooting bullets at each other or if we do, you know, start to tighten the screws a little more. i think it's going to have a lot more to do with what happens when capital flows in and out of russia. they've already pulled back quite a bit. if that continues, that's going to be a problem for the european banks. >> don't you think so far the market has been extraordinarily calm about what russia's been doing? >> exactly, y

janet yellen: -- janet yellen, holding her first news conference today as chair of the fed.s agreed to pay $1.4 billion in a criminal investigation regarding sudden, unintended accelerations. stormsays that winter hit their official headquarters hard. their earnings missed estimates and they are blaming it on the weather. in other company news, the latest deal for berkshire hathaway and graham holdings, saying that the extent of the warren buffett tax knowledge, avoiding on a billion dollars, swapping shares, the billionaire took advantage of tax laws to reduce the irs stake despite the public stance the corporations should pay their share of taxes. betty liu is in san francisco today. you know, betty, i just have to say -- at what point does he put his money where his mouth is? he is out there saying that this is not good. he has certainly benefited from carried interest. and he has complained about it. so, why not just pay more tax? >> i agree. i don't know if you remember, but years ago we asked that question to him. we said that if you do not like the tax law, don't feel

janet yellen said they will continue to scale back the programs. and keep interest rates at record lows. but they could raise them after winding down the bond buying program. >> the language that we used in the statement is considerable period. so i -- i, you know, this is the kind of term, it's hard to define, but, you know, probably means something on the order of around six months or that type of thing. >> policy makers decided to further reduce monthly purchases of the treasury bonds and other assets to $55 billion. they said heavy snow caused economic activity to slow down in the winter, but the economy has sufficient underlying strength to support improvement in the job market. the unemployment fell to 6.7%. they promised to keep rates low until 6.5%. now they will look at the labor market as a whole, inflation as well as a number of other things that making their decision. >>> people have been looking for any change under yellen. we have more on the first policy meeting. >> yellen wanted to make it clear that despite the change in leadership

janet yellen gave the clear, granule view. >> okay. it's like taking the training wheels off a bike. we argued about this for years. you agreed finally that at least some of it is because of hot money. the stock market has to make this decision whether or not it can do it without the training wheels. so to think that there is going to be a three or four-week adjustment period, yes, rates are going higher because things are better. i believe that. everybody should know that rates are going up. when i hear that rhetoric, i get a little scared. >> it's been five years. it's been five years. >> cooperman is right and, wait a second -- >> i think he's right, too. >> janet yellen got most of the stories wrong. >> she's just as confused as anyone. >> she is. she said one good thing. we're going to raise rates sooner, at six months. that's good. whether she stumbled into it or not, i'm glad it's in her head. but, but, but, it's not going to be about janet yellen. it's going to be about profits. it's been such a lousy economy and a lousy recove

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we have yellen speaking today. the last two times she's spoken, the market has gone higher, and don't forget, guys, we have $2.678 trillion in money sitting at.001% on the sidelines. no real increase in interest rates except for maybe 2015. so despite all the fundamentals, we sill have some room in this market to go. it is going to be spotted with volatility, but i still think we've got room to grow in this market. >> rick santelli, it's not uncommon to see the market rally into the fed's meeting tomorrow. but we could be talking about significant tweaks to the language, their tashrgets, anotr taper on the way. >> you know, tweaks to the language, does that really sound as earth shattering as we want to make it out to be? i don't know. >> i think it could be. >> to me it's all the rorschach. in the end we all know what's going on here. we have janet yellen continuing quote, unquote, the taper. why they need to continue to make any purchase whatsoever after listening to our guest makes no sense to me at all. i think

that is their opportunity to backtrack from janet yellen's words. that is your number one focus today. >> thank you so much, jonathan ferro with the latest on the markets. the u.s. and eu tightened sanctions on president vladimir couldn't -- vladimir putin. european leaders are in brussels for a second day of meetings. ryan chilcote is on the ground. let's run through some of the sanction targets. sanctions target individuals and they include some interesting personalities. , theyllionaire brothers are both friends of vladimir putin. about $7recipients of billion worth of sochi contracts. not the only ones on the list. gennady timchenko was an owner of gunvor, that swiss oil trader that has been talked about. they had as much as $92 billion in revenue. he has sold his stake over the last couple of days. he is also a friend of president putin. really interesting, the u.s. alleging that vladimir putin himself has a financial interest in gunvor. the kremlin denying that flatly. also, your he -- yuri k ovalchuk, one of the owners of russia's largest ban

. >> when you're trying to buy a home, sell a home or save for retirement, janet yellen might well have been speaking to you. plus i'll talk to one of the nation's biggest home builders about how he's feeling about the market. i'm ali velshi, this is "real money." >> this is real money. you are the most important part of the show. join our live conversation for the next half hour at twitter at aj real money, . listen up. the federal reserve just signaled today the rates you pay already on hold for now. that's good to know. the little foresight can help you make better financial decisions that will help you build your prosperity for tomorrow. if you're planning to buy a home tomorrow, the 30 year fixed rate is 4.4%. while that's almost a full point higher than they were a year ago, that is still near historic lows. knowing that the feds lending rate at near zero right now will hold means that you can probably hold out for a better home price and not worry as much about rising rates. on the retirement side knowing that cds and savings accounts will continue to yield low returns, means you

top, mentioned at the inflation is too low, janet yellen said. that is another reason the fed will stay on hold for the time being. she is trying to push people back to the data dependent stage, the idea that it is the data that will make the call. she cited a number of data points that were not very good. >> numbers do not lie. what does it mean for investors? >> that is the funny thing. it does not mean anything in the end. if things were really bad in the economy, the fed will be talking about stopping the taper and adding more stimulus to the economy. it means the policy is status quo but the idea that there is a specific date is off the table. do not take me at my word and say it will be in june of 2015 pair wait to see how the data develops but we will not change anything between now and then. >> michael, thank you. for the first time in decades, the u.s. supreme court is hearing a software patent case. the ruling in this case could affect almost half of the nation's patent suits. greg joins us from the supreme court. tell us about them and

you heard from janet yellen. what do you think? >> i think that she had a good sense on what they were telling the market. >> which is? >> that there could be a couple of phases, that we might see rising policy rating sooner than the market would like to see them, but the second matter -- and i think she was pretty clear about this -- her major fear is whether she does not know if we will get inflation back to the target rate anytime soon. >> but she is not going to use that anymore. >> she is not going to use that anymore. the economy may be going through demographic shift, but as a practical matter this is not a robust employment picture. but that does not matter. if you look at durables in the last round -- there is nothing doing. >> julia coronado, come in on janet yellen's press conference. give me your reaction. >> she has a great communication style. she gets great stylistic points. she tries to answer questions very clearly. that is all very positive. again, it is the message, the message being the market first reacted to t

that is what janet yellen is saying. the question is when that will and. we are not clear.lose to hercards chest. she is treading the line between giving clear signals to the market to investors, see you do not see the nasty bumps we have seen, and of the same time she needs to remain, retain some mystery because she does not know how the u.s. economic recovery will progress. >> do you expect there to be a global reaction tomorrow? to wait and see. wall street did not like what they heard. >> michelle fleury for us, thanks very much. we will be watching those markets tomorrow. she was one of the greatest stars of the 20th century's. marlene dietrich entertained audiences onstage and on screen. starting today, 250 of her items are going up for auction, among them a letter written to her by ernst hemingway. ♪ >> marlene dietrich made the movies her own, bringing her style to the big screen and around the world. >> marlene dietrich, the ultimate femme fatale. she was sexy, dangerous, all the things you want in a movie era, and who is also mysterious. >> some of her secrets are